It's Only a Nightmare
by Loqui Mar
Summary: Ashfield County detective Hannah Chou ventures into Silent Hill on a case only to discover the town seems to know more about her than just her case.
1. Welcome to Silent Hill

Welcome to Silent Hill

_Welcome to Silent Hill_

The sky was already starting to fog over, and the light was fading. That was one thing Hannah always hated about Silent Hill; the damned fog. It was still midday and yet Hannah was forced to turn on her lights, the fog getting thicker the closer she drove to lake Toluca. She grunted in frustration, tapping the wheel impatiently. The pine woodlands either side of the road faded into the boring grey. She grunted again. The fog was heavier than she had ever remembered, and it was pissing her off.

Her assistant riding next to her in the squad car shifted uncomfortably. Sergeant Marcus Bennet; possibly one of the most annoying men on the planet, at least to Hannah, and whom she was sure the captain had assigned to her in this investigation with her opinion of Bennet expressly in mind. The sergeant was a horribly pitiful man. He lacked confidence, second-guessed everything he did and had the irritating habit of fidgeting constantly when not doing anything else. He was currently playing with the cuffs of his suit jacket, the metal on the cuff links clicking together over and over until Hannah could barely stand it.

"Detective…are you alright?" His face showed he was oblivious to his own annoying conduct. Hannah simply glared at him for a moment and changed subject.

"We've almost reached Toluca Lake. We'll make our way to the local department and pick up the files on the case from there." She concentrated on the road as she spoke. The fog was getting unbelievably thick and she was determined to spite it. She could barely see twenty feet ahead of her, but she kept up the speed. This wasn't her first time to Silent Hill after all so she was confident she could predict the turns.

"Has the local force been contacted about our arrival, detective Chou?" Marcus warily dipped his hand into his jacket to get his phone. It was horribly presumptuous of him to think that she had not contacted the local force, a fact she had been relying upon to cover up the fact that she had not been bothered to call them. She muttered under her breath some half-hearted excuse about paperwork and let the sergeant dial the number.

Dial tone.

Marcus dialed again. As he tried, a whining came over the radio. Hannah absent-mindedly turned the volume up a little to try and identify the chatter. The static remained. She turned it down again. As she flicked her eyes back to the road she saw the 'Silent Hill Exit' signpost pass on the right.

"What the hell?" The afterimage of the sign flashed with a dark shape darting into the pines. "Is something wrong, detective?" Marcus had looked up from his phone. She could hear the dial tone again.

"Nothing's wrong. Don't worry about calling them. I'm sure it will be a pleasant surprise for them. Not like they get much action around here." Marcus put the phone back and settled back into fidgeting.

The turn off into Nathan Avenue came sooner than Hannah remembered. The avenue thinned as they moved away from the highway and soon turned into the quiet road flanked by the thick wood that Hannah remembered.

"Detective, don't you think you should slow d-" The car skidded suddenly before Marcus could finish. Hannah turned the wheel frantically to try and regain control of the squad car, but the thin road let the car veer off into a ditch. The wheels screeched, Marcus cried out, and the car groaned as it crashed. Hannah's face landed uncomfortably in an airbag and the seatbelt lashed against her chest. Within seconds everything had stopped, the engine spouting steam and the rear wheels spinning and squeaking, suspended in the air.

Stumbling from the car and falling from the unexpected drop to the bottom of the ditch, Hannah attempted to gain her bearings. The squad car lay behind her looking rather worse for wear. Her hands were covered in mud, as was her trench coat. She stood slowly and attempted to brush the mud off, slightly dizzy from the impact but soon righted. Checking herself, she found nothing missing. She still had her gun, wallet, badge, everything.

The hacking cough from the other side of the car alerted her to the fact that her partner was all right. Part of her resented that reality. She scaled the ditch to the roadside and fixed herself up. Her dark hair had come undone from its bun and her shirt had untucked itself and lost a button; she corrected these.

Marcus unceremoniously heaved himself from the ditch. His jacket was torn, his face and hands were dirty, and he had numerous bruises and cuts over his face and arms, but he was otherwise fine.

"Get your phone out, sergeant, and call the local department again." Marcus patted himself down before realising he must have lost the phone in the car. He clumsily edged down the ditch supporting himself on the car to get to his door, managing to slide down at the last moment and dirty himself again.

Hannah surveyed the scene. The fog was thick, and there was nothing but pine and scrub on either side of the road. She could only see about ten feet all around her, however from what she could judge the turn onto Sandford Street was about a hundred feet or so ahead anyway, which would bring them into Silent Hill proper. Transit between South Vale and Paleville was always decent, so she figured they had a chance to get a ride with the help of their badges.

"Errrr…detective? The phone isn't responding to anything. The only thing that works…" Marcus' head popped out from behind the car, holding aloft two walkie-talkies triumphantly "…are these. Got some spare batteries too." He scrambled up the ditch again and offered a radio to Hannah. She gave him a look of scorn before walking in the direction of Sandford Street. A disappointed Marcus followed on, clipping the radios to his belt.

"Sooo…uh…detective…what was it that jumped out in front of us back there?" Hannah had been puzzling over that point since she had crawled out of the ditch, and Marcus' illumination of it hardly helped her confusion. Just before the crash, some huge shadow had lept in front of the car and, for all Hannah could tell, bounded off into the woods on the other side of the road. She couldn't tell what it had been. The closest thing it could have been was a bear, but it moved so fast and was so huge, plus the fact that few bears wandered these woods, that is was difficult to conceive that it was, in fact, a creature at all.

"Ignore that for now. We'll contact local rangers or something when we get the phone fixed. For now let's concentrate on getting a ride into town." She strode ahead of Marcus.

"Wait…detective…Detective Chou wait!" Marcus had to jog to keep up with her. He was not a terribly impressive man, nor very energetic, so he was puffing once they arrived at the intersection of Sandford Street and Nathan Avenue.

The silence was unnerving. All there was in the air was a slight stirring of the wind and the distant washing of the lake's water. No birds, no cars, no rustling of trees. It was terribly strange to Hannah that there was absolutely no traffic on either road. They waited a few minutes at the intersection, but there was no sound. She didn't voice it, but she could swear the fog was watching them from behind, closing up and becoming a solid wall. On the other side of the road they had just walked down lay the sign facing the way they had come, reading 'Welcome to Silent Hill'. Hardly welcoming.

Marcus, who had wandered over to the sign, waved Hannah over.

"Detective, I think you'd better see this." His voice was quavering a little and sounded confused. Annoying though he may be, Hannah would think he could at least read a sign. She walked over, not bothering to look both ways across the road. A little nagging voice in her mind ticked her off for jaywalking as well as speeding on the way here and failing to indicate when turning. She tallied up what she would owe in fines and then disregarded it.

She stopped dead as she followed Marcus' eyes to the sign.

"TURN BACK"

The sign had been smeared all over with the writing. The writing itself was written in red paint, or what Hannah hoped to be red paint. It looked like someone had used their whole hand to wipe the letters onto the sign; red hand prints blotted in odd areas so that one could only just make out the actual letters of welcome beneath. The writing also remained unfinished, the 'K' at the end incomplete, and a deep gouge in the sign made by some clawed beast near the letter.

Hannah turned to Marcus. He was squatting, looking at the grass near the base of the sign. Looking at the damp ground, the grass was spattered with the 'paint'. Marcus followed the trail away from the road, and halted at the ridge of the ditch that served as a barrier, following with his eyes the trail until it disappeared into the woods beyond. He made to follow but Hannah's hand on his shoulder halted him.

Hannah shook her head. "Look at it all. It's been dry for a while now. The best we can do is call the rangers when we get to a phone."

"But, detective, why the warning? Do you think it was just an animal?" despite Marcus' supposed protest, he had turned and hung his head submissively.

"Probably delirious with fear or from blood loss." Hannah looked back at the sign. The image wriggled a little. She blinked a few times to fix her eyes. A little mark she didn't remember seeing before was on the corner where the claw mark lay. It was not drawn in the same way as the warning. It was small and neat, but still drawn with the dark red. It was a waxing quarter moon with a cross on its edge, an epsilon drawn out from the eclipse lay inside the eclipsing moon. Hannah scrutinised it before waving to Marcus. "We're moving on now, sergeant." With that she began walking up Sandford Street.

Hours of walking through the endless fog, not a word exchanged between either person, not a car to be heard, just the lapping of the invisible lake to the east and half-glimpsed shadows in the woods and on the road. Marcus was clearly on edge; every now and then the radios on his belt would spit out meaningless static. He would tweak them until he saw a shape in the fog, and then walk a little closer to Hannah until the static died. Half an hour into the empty fog of Sandford and he was pulling his gun from the holster and pointing into the fog in the middle of the road behind them.

"W-what the hell is going on?" His voice was trying to hide the fear, but it did so unconvincingly. Hannah came into his view as Marcus looked into the fog with wide, unblinking eyes. She placed a hand on his shoulder and slowly pushed his quivering hands down to lower the gun.

"Calm down, its just fog. It tricks your eyes sometimes and makes you see things. Happens all the time when I come over here, now pull yourself together and turn off the damned radios, they're making you jumpy." She was lying. She had never seen the fog act like this, neither had she seen Silent Hill so quiet before. She looked about the street as Marcus holstered his gun and turned off the radios, still edgy. She could make out a gate a few feet into the dim fog on the side of the road, and a gravel driveway. She walked over to it and found it to be the entrance to some kind of country home, with a long driveway winding uphill through the pines and into the mist. A sign on the fence proclaimed it to be Graycliff Estate, with an additional sign beneath it showing that it was a bed-and-breakfast for the tourists.

"C'mon Bennet, they'll have a phone up here." She nodded her head to the gate and moved up the driveway without waiting. Marcus paused. Shadows in the woods occupied his mind for a moment before he bolted to keep up with Hannah.

The Graycliff house was something to behold. A large, English style mansion with two floors, a small car park out the front, an elegant if rustic charm, and not much room between the mansion and the woodland surrounding it. The climb had taken the breath out of Hannah, and she attempted to catch it at the summit of the uphill slope while appraising the mansion. Marcus was lagging behind, puffing and wheezing much more than her. She noted two cars in the tourist's car park, as well as, when she walked a little closer, two more in the open garage on the right side of the building. Looking up at the main building, she saw that all the windows were boarded up, and rather badly at that. As Marcus reached Hannah's side, doubled over and wheezing, she looked down at him and smiled at his pathetic, retching form, chuckling a little and thanking herself for all that time spent in the gym.

"Alright, lets see who's home." She plunged ahead, invigorated by his lack of fitness and her own superiority. Marcus attempted to call out for her to wait, but was unable to find the breath to do so, raising an arm to get her attention before realising the futility of it, and stumbling after Hannah.

By the time Marcus reached the door Hannah was already getting impatient. She knocked for the third time but there was no sound from behind the large wooden doors.

"Ashfield County Police, open this door!" Hannah rapped at the door until her knuckles were red. It was painful enough knocking on solid wood when it was so cold with the fog out, but she was getting tired of the fog and Marcus. The lack of response of the occupants was increasingly agitating to Hannah. Marcus propped himself up against one of the walls in the little alcove the front door was set in and tried his best to speak coherently.

"Perhaps no one's home, detective. The windows were boarded up. They might be out the back for all we know, or have abandoned the house." Hannah took a step back to consider the facts at hand.

"They also have at least four cars here. I would think there was at least one person looking after the house at this time of day. And why would they abandon the house and leave signs out front and cars in the drive?" Settling on her conclusion as the right one, Hannah grabbed the doorknob and turned. The door opened easily and Hannah followed it as it swung in.

"Hello? Ashfield County Police, anyone here?" Hannah strode more confidently into the spacious, hollow foyer of the mansion. Twin, curving staircases dominated the room, leading to an upper balcony. The walls were decorated with numerous paintings and sculptures on tables. All in all it was quite a nice set up. The whole place was very dark. The only light Hannah could perceive was from the door they had just opened. It was like the place was abandoned, but Hannah still couldn't see why they left without cars or taking the signs down.

Marcus lingered outside, catching his breath. He was trying to avoid looking anywhere other than at the ground or the wall. Out on the road he had been seeing shadows in the fog, and he knew that if he looked out there again, he would probably see something; whether real or something concocted from his mind's own certainty that he would find threatening shapes in the shifting obscurity of the fog. He stared intently at the granite doorstep. Just the step, look at nothing else, just look at the granite and the little flecks of white in the dark stone, nothing else.

Without realising it, his eyes turned back to the outside. A bit of movement caught out of the corner of his eye caused him to cast a glance out into the fog. Part of him disciplined his head not to follow the look, every muscle in his body tensing to keep his head from following his eyes. He could not see well in the fog, but he could see to the drive and the shadows cast by the woods beyond it. There was something out there, he knew it. If he listened to the fog carefully, he could make out the sound of the gravel of the driveway being trod. The steady crunch of the grains transfixed his eyes on the shadows. He strained to look a little further, just a little bit so he could see what was going on there clearly and disprove what he was hearing, what he might be seeing. He registered movement down the drive. The shadow of the tree line thickened a little. It was at the very limit of what he could distinguish as real and not. The crunching stopped, as did the shadow. Marcus paused, frozen stiff.

The sound rippled from nothingness to a volume that defended him either through its weight or his fear. It came from right next to his ear, yet he knew that it came from the shadow. It was a low, guttural, decaying growl that tore at Marcus' skin as he shivered. His muscles loosened and he suddenly had grabbed the door, tossed himself inside the mansion and slammed it shut, plunging Hannah and himself into darkness.


	2. Partners

Partners Partners

It was a deeper-than-night dark that held onto the two police. The house groaned a little in the floorboards and, as the scrambling, manic movements of Marcus stopped, Hannah could hear the sound of a chandelier above her twinkling from the violent movement. After that, the silent wind filled the house.

Hannah sensed Marcus getting back onto his feet. She moved to him swiftly and grabbed his shoulder. He turned to her and gasped. She could feel his hot, desperate breath on her face. Despite her own conviction that the house was empty, her reprimand was a hoarse whisper.

"What the HELL are you doing Sergeant!?" He stammered and gasped but she did not let him finish, turning and peering into the darkness, pushing him a little more than was necessary.

"We need to find a light and see where the hell everyone is." She walked to the wall and groped for a light switch. She paused when she heard no movement from Marcus.

"Move it!" Her anger motivated him into action and soon he was mimicking her. Shortly, she located the switch and hit it. The disappointing lack of light from above only served to frustrate her further. No power? Perhaps the house _was_ abandoned.

"The power's off, sergeant, don't worry about it." She leant against the wall and thought for a moment about what their next course of action should be.

A blast of blinding light flared in her eyes. She brought her hand up too late and opened her eyes to try and re-adjust them. A beam of light crossed her vision in the dark house. Marcus was walking towards her, a working flashlight in each hand. He handed one to her. She scowled at him for a while before snatching it from his palm.

"Why didn't you hand this to me earlier?" Marcus faltered for a moment.

"Well, we were about to turn on the lights. I didn't think there would be a use for them just yet." He retreated a little and swung his light away to scan the foyer trying to move away from the subject of his folly, his scans lingering often on the front door and what lay beyond it.

Hannah scanned the foyer herself. From the light of the torch she could see the house had at not long been abandoned. No dust or cobwebs showed up, and the only objects to indicate the derelict nature of the Graycliff were the nailed boards and black cloth covering the windows.

Her torch eventually strayed over a small door under the left staircase. Moving closer, the door bore a small symbol of a lightning bolt. When she tried the door, it remained fastened and locked.

She called back to Marcus, whose attention had been mostly on the front door. "This is the fuse-box. If we can find the key and turn on the power again, perhaps we can call town and get them to pick us up from here." Marcus turned to her and infuriatingly blinded her for a second time.

"Sorry, detective. Errr…just a problem. If the house is abandoned, wouldn't the phone lines be down?" Hannah paused. She felt a fool for overlooking that detail, and she was not one to suffer that kind of embarrassment.

"Look, just get some power to this place. If the lines don't work then…perhaps we could…do something about our own phones. I want you to search upstairs and I'll check down here." With that she stormed off to the door that lead into the rooms on the left side of the mansion, leaving a stunned Marcus in her wake.

Closing the door behind her, Hannah entered what she could only assume to be the dining room. A long table ran across her path with dozens of chairs each neatly in place, and half-burned, unlit candles resting in regular intervals on the table, which was otherwise bare wood. The light showed an elaborate fireplace on the other side of the room midway, the sight of it making her wish for some warmth, the mansion walls doing little to warm the house. To her left, against the front wall of the mansion was a small room. She creaked across the floor, strangely unwilling to disturb the silence of the house.

Opening the small door that led into the room, she found the servery. Pans, woks and other cookware of decent quality hung from the rails on the roof, and several sinks interrupted the benches, as well as a waist-high freezer. A dumb waiter was set in the far wall. There was, to Hannah's frustration, no place for keys.

She move back to the dining room and paused. There was something odd about the room, like something had changed while she was gone. She dismissed the feeling and proceeded down the long table to the far door, which she presumed led outside. When she tried it, she found the door was curiously broken. The mechanism rattled as it failed to meet with the latch device. Shoving the door also did little good besides getting some aggression out of Hannah's system.

She lent against the door, puffing a little from her previous exertion. As she caught her breath she could hear the silence of the house once more. It creaked and groaned. She could hear nothing of Marcus in the upper rooms, only miscellaneous cracks and moaning of wood.

Without warning, the sudden, loud sound of wood scraping against wood came. She turned quickly, her breath faster and heartbeat quicker. The sound had come from the room she was in. Looking down the length of the room, she saw nothing but the table and chairs. She checked herself, and found her hand lying on the cold metal of her pistol at her side, concealed beneath the trench coat. She slowed her breathing and calmed herself, returning to the entrance of the dining table. Before she left the room she turned back and gave it a once over. Her torch scanned the table, fireplace, candles, chairs. It paused. She lingered its focus on the chair at the head of the table closest to her. She took a slow, deep breath. She had not remembered the chair being out before. It was positioned far out from the table and slightly turned towards the door she was sitting at. Perhaps her memory had been failing her. She disregarded it and left the dining room.

The foyer was silent. Hannah could hear nothing of Marcus upstairs. She held her stance at the entrance and looked about the room once more. Her eyes caught on something red and lustrous. Her light lingered on a table near the door to the fuse-box. She did not recall a table being there when she had tried to open it a few minutes ago. Much less did she recall that a large, rather out-of-date red phone had stood on the table. It was one of those phones you had to turn a dial to a number, release, and wait for the dial to turn back to zero before putting in the next. She inspected it quietly. A wire ran directly into the fuse-box. She remained quite perplexed at the appearance of the phone. Perhaps there had been a phone there. Thinking back, she seemed to remember it now, yes. She disregarded it again and proceeded to the double doors at the back of the foyer.

Before she could open the door, however, a barking shot echoed through the silence of the house. A Glock 17, Marcus' sidearm. Three more shots followed that in rapid succession. Hannah bolted up the stairs, drawing her own 9mm, torch held close to it to see where she was aiming. The shot had sounded from the right-hand door on the back wall of the balcony of the second storey. Hannah opened the door slowly, Glock and torch first.

"Marcus?" The door creaked open with Hannah as she slipped inside the room. Marcus was not there. On either side of the room, in the dim half-light of the flashlight, were two meagre beds, and wooden closets on either side of Hannah next to the door, with a window, boarded up of course, in the back wall. However, Hannah's eyes lay on the chair in the middle of the room.

The chair faced her, almost obscenely out of place right in the middle of the room. It was simple, yet there was something about the chair's structure that gave Hannah the urge to burn it. The alignments of the spokes of the back were just off unless Hannah focused on them, the dip of the seat would appear warped when her eyes were elsewhere. On the chair sat one of the walkie-talkies Marcus had recovered from the squad car. It was humming soft white noise to itself. Hannah approach cautiously, gun still raised at the radio. As she walked forward, she stepped on something. She turned the light down and lifted her foot, uncovering a spent 9mm casing. Shifting herself to see them better, she found the other three. This had been the place the bullets had been fired from, and yet Marcus was not here, only his radio.

It was only as an aside that Hannah heard the radio's static. She had holstered her Glock and was going to pick up one of the casings when she heard it. She turned her attention back to the radio. The buzzing static quivered and she straightened, picking the radio up and twisting the dial. Nothing but gritting static.

She depressed the call button back at the original station. "Sergeant? Are you there sergeant Bennet?" Louder static was all that followed. She turned from the chair and adjusted the radio more.

A blasting rush of air, like a furnace had been opened, hit Hannah from the direction of the window. A rattle of metal. Raking, ragged fingernail claws struck her and sliced a stinging-hot cut in her cheek and tore her trench-coat sleeve. The force of heavy flesh and bruising hard metal rammed into her shoulder and she collapsed towards the door. What is it? The stink of what Hannah could only link to charred and burning pork with a strong smell of copper filled the room. The rumbling, quaking roar of sound that crushed her ears was like an inferno whirlwind given human aspect. What the hell was it!? Hannah could see flashes of two fires that blinded her vision of all else in the room, shaking above her prone form. She could sense darkness a little deeper beneath the small flames. WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?! She scrambled to her feet, pushing away to the door. The furnace roar came again and the flames rushed her. FUCK! She drew her Glock and fired. She didn't know how many shots she took. However, at point blank, the flames buckled, a clanking rattle of chains and the fires were obscured for a moment under some dark object. Hannah managed a look at her assaulter and wished she hadn't.

It looked human, yet it could not have been. The flesh was singed, in places down to the bone, dripping with the pus of putrid burns. The skin clung to the body too tightly, scar tissue making it appear as if it had all been grafted on. It was on its knees, heavy metal chains bound it, clamped through its kneecaps, where Hannah could see some of the white bone protruding from the leg. Those chains led up to the thing's chest, great iron rings linked to the chains threaded through the breasts of the thing, weeping singed blood and pus. Its arms were crossed over one-another, ending in the hands with long, shredded and broken fingernails. The hands were bound in their positions by iron bolts through the wrists, chaining it to the head of the thing that obscured the two fires. The monster rose from its kneeling form, flashing its fire-eyes to Hannah again. Two chains attached to rings protruding from the back of its head pulled its head back, linked through the Achilles tendon with more chains, exposing the mouth, a darkness in the pale head covered with a thin membrane of flesh that vibrated as it roared like fire.

The furnace-sound roared over a muffled human scream, blended with it as the fire-eyed monster righted itself. Hannah let loose with the Glock again, firing and firing. The thing stumbled and flinched as each bullet hit. It was on its knees again. Hannah fired into its head. Three shots and the monster was still twitching, buckling in pain. She fired again and the monster went limp. The fire-eyes dimmed and it rocked back until the chains on its chest tugged at its knees, pulling it forward again. It twisted and collapsed, and the fires went out.

Hannah was breathing heavily. She lowered the Glock slowly but kept the flashlight on the monster's corpse. The stink of burning human flesh faded, leaving her with the smell of gunpowder. The radio was no longer crackling, humming out a quiet buzz of white noise where it fell, next to the broken chair behind the corpse. Hannah's throat was dry and hoarse, and only then did she realise she had been yelling as she had fired.

"What the hell was that?" She said that out loud, as if someone could hear her. She managed to move her feet once more, stepping over the corpse to retrieve the radio. Somehow, it had reacted to the thing. She was becoming increasingly convinced that something was happening in Silent Hill that defied her explanation. On top of that, Marcus was gone.

Attempting to forget the hideous corpse in the middle of the room, Hannah turned to the door. It was then she noticed something on the back of it. It was a slip of paper and a small fire-drill map of Graycliff Estate. The paper read, "In case of power failure, use fuse-box. Key is in the study." The handwriting was neat and precise, but on the bottom right-hand corner of the paper was a mark carefully drawn that Hannah had seen before. It was the mark that had been on the town's welcome sign, the eclipse. Hannah tore the paper from the door, screwed it up and discarded it, turning to the map. Each room was marked, and the study lay on the second floor in the south wing, or directly above the dining room. Hannah took the map and left the bedroom for the balcony.

The foyer was creaking and empty. No sign of Marcus. Hannah was still reeling from her encounter, trying to grasp what had happened, leaving the bedroom stunned and alert. Her flashlight paved its way into the hallway on the other side of balcony. When she opened the old door there, it moaned in response. She drew her pistol and pointed it down the hall. It was empty. She calmed herself. She made excuses, she was jittery, she was annoyed, she was frustrated, no reason to go waving a gun around everywhere. She calmed herself and pushed on.

The map indicated the study was the room to Hannah's left, and the hallway revealed a single door on that side. She opened it, cautiously, her flashlight going first. It was furnished like a typical posh study; desk, bookshelf, file cabinet, cushioned seat near the bookshelf, fireplace, there was even a cello in one corner of the room, discarded and somewhat worse for wear. A set of wooden double-doors were set in the back wall of the study. Hannah entered and moved straight to the desk, holstering her pistol. On it were a few scraps of paper, and peculiarly, each page's writing had run, like every page had been let out in the rain so that it was all illegible. One page did remain, however. It was a short memo in faded type that read:

"Patient admitted into Intensive Care for severe burns and lacerations. Patient shows signs of mental trauma. Wounds indicate intentional assault on the patient, defensive marks on hands. Marks on wrists, ankles and neck indicate the patient had been bound but not gagged. To be sedated and await further tests.

Dr. M. Kaufmann, Alchemilla Hospital Director" The date was smudged.

Hannah stood staring at the paper for some time after she finished reading it. Why was _this_ report in _this_ house, and right in a place where she could see it? Something was going on. Someone knew that she would be in this house. Perhaps there was still someone in the house? Her mind slipped over the image of the monster that lay in the bedroom. She flinched visibly and tried to suppress the memory. She tried to distract herself and focus on the task at hand, pushing the leaf of paper aside and moving to the drawers.

All the drawers were empty save one, in which a small key sat mockingly in the middle of the drawer. The entire drawer just for one key? It had to have been placed there by someone that intended for her to find it. She took it anyway and made for the fuse-box.

Down at the fuse-box, Hannah squatted next to the red phone on the table. She slowly began to realise the stupidity of the plan. Surely the phone was disconnected? But then, she could also sense the other person's hand in this, and suddenly felt more than confident that the phone would work, but not in the way she might intend.

She unlocked the door with a small click and the fuse-box appeared behind it. It was a simple enough mechanism; Hannah flipping the small switch that had indicated the electricity was off. Hannah looked up as the various lights about the foyer flickered. The chandelier high above her twinkled as the buzz of electric light filled it. Within a few seconds the lights all flickered more violently before plunging Hannah into darkness once again in a spurt of sparks.

Hannah swore. The damnable power failed after all. The fuse-box showed the safety circuit breaker for the lights had engaged during the surge, as well as those for the electricity going to all the other rooms in the mansion, minus the foyer. Power was still going to the room she was in but the lights had failed. Perhaps the phone was still working?

Her answer came as the phone rang alarmingly loudly next to her ear. She pulled away from it, plugging the harassed ear in annoyance as the big red phone chimed at her. Something was going on, she knew it. She grabbed the phone and thrust it to her other ear. "Who the fuck is this?"

The voice that came from the other end was calm, feminine, friendly and polite. "Oh my, that's a little rude! You should be a little nicer to people on the phone, dear, especially if you don't know who it is."

Hannah ground her teeth in annoyance. The woman was being difficult, but a part of her reprimanded Hannah for jumping to conclusions, and reverted Hannah to her more methodical self. "Sorry. This is Detective Hannah Chou of Ashfield County Police. Who is calling?"

"Oh you should know who I am, dear. Besides, it doesn't matter _who_. I trust you're enjoying your stay at Graycliff?"

The condescending pleasantry of the woman pushed Hannah closer to yelling at her again, but she maintained some of her focus. "So you know where I am? What is going on here?"

"Nothing that hasn't happened here before, dear."

"The hell is that supposed to mean?"

"It means that it would be best for you to listen to what I have to say, dear."

Hannah tossed her head in frustration. "Then spit it out woman!"

Without warning the voice on the line changed to a deep, unnatural distortion of the human voice. "GET TO THE EAST GARAGE IN SOUTH PALEVILLE." The voice then changed. The new voice was muffled, and sounded injured, like teeth had been knocked out and they had cotton in their mouth. "H-H-Hannah? Preef helf me! Preef, fumfin if happenin! Preef helf me!" It was unmistakable, the voice was Marcus Bennet's.

The phone clicked and the dial tone followed. Sparks came from the fuse-box and the dial tone cut, power severed from the phone. Hannah slowly put the phone down on the receiver. She stared at the phone for a while. Now she had a hostage situation. She tried to focus on that only. It didn't matter who the hostage was, she had a duty to perform now. The case would wait.

Hannah walked across the creaking floor of Graycliff until she reached the front door. She opened it, expecting the relative brightness of the foggy world beyond. Instead she was greeted with darkness. The cold fog still hung in the air, but no sunshine illuminated it. It was utterly dark, and only the light of her flashlight pierced it. How was that possible? It had been early afternoon only an hour or so ago. Hannah stepped back into the house for a moment. Her light caught on something on the desk that lay next to the door. The glint of metal shone as she focused on it. Three items sat there. A map of Silent Hill, a Glock 17, and an Ashfield County police badge, belonging to one "Sergeant Marcus M. Bennet".


	3. The Open Road

The Open Road The Open Road

The heavy doors clunked closed behind Hannah. She was alone in the darkened parking lot in front of Graycliff. Only her light provided a little island of assurance ahead of her. Gravel crunched under her feet. Her gun was already out. She would not be caught off guard here. The unnatural night concealed the world around her. Only sound was her ally here. She was both anxious for, and dreaded, the arrival of something in the dark. She wanted the suspense to be over, for the dark to show its secrets so she could send a dozen bullets into them, yet, when her mind flicked back to her memory of the bedroom, she lost some of her nerve. Only her desire to find the one that took the hostage drove her forward.

Sound whispered on the cusp of her hearing. It grew quickly to the rattling static of the radio at her hip. Her mind flashed with scarred skin and chains and she froze. Part of her gained control and she panned her light around her slowly. The static grew louder. The crunch of gravel joined in. Hannah's torch turned to mansion face. The shadows in the garage and under the eaves of the great house moved. Hannah brought up her gun to level with the dark, flicking from one to the next. Where would it come from?

A dozen foot-falls on gravel followed her anticipation. The shadow belched forth the first of them. A stunted, hideous beast, but still vaguely human. It's shrunken head stretched from its bulbous body on a wrinkled, atrophied neck. It moved like an ape, shifting its hunched, oil-shine body on wolf-like legs and huge, gorilla arms. In its hand it held a rusty, bloody cleaver. Behind it, ripping themselves from the shadows of the house, came a dozen more, and more behind them, all carrying pipes, knives and various other improvised weapons. As little black-bead eyes set in their flayed, mouthless faces found the light, they snorted and picked up their pace.

Hannah backed away from the horde that lumbered slowly into the light of her torch. Her gun shivered as she moved it from one creature to the next. She breathed heavily. There were to many, far to many for her to take down. They were smaller than the other creature, but there were so many of the disgusting brutes. Their little black shell-bodies shone in the light, their heads twitched madly, faster than the eye could follow. A few up the front of the horde slowed, their faces regarding Hannah for a moment. She froze, they froze. Then they began to charge.

Hannah fled as fast as she could down the drive. She had loosed a few shots at the leading creatures, but it did little to deter the galloping charge. So she flew down the unsteady driveway. Her feet slid on the steep downhill slope, her dark hair loosed. She fell, pushed herself up as the clatter of gravel and the squealing and violent snorting followed her in a wave. She looked back and saw the dark tide of monstrosities scrabbling down the drive only a few metres behind her. She screamed. She fled. She didn't look back again.

Hannah son made it to the front gate and vaulted over it, landing on the road. She fell forward and righted herself before stopping. Where would she go? Her car was stuck, but it was a way out. She could go for the garage but that meant crossing miles of road on foot with those beasts chasing her. She looked around wildly, trying to make the decision. Her torch caught movement in the tree line. Charging shadows in the pines. They were coming from the woods. How could she possibly outrun them? The sound of hog-like roars and squeals and trampled gravel filled her mind. She fired aimlessly into the woods and the darkness of the driveway. The horde that had followed her came into her view and she became transfixed with the black-shelled gangs of brute that were coming for her. She fired and screamed at them. She was drenched in sweat and her pistol clicked. Empty, just as the first brute pulled the gate of the house down with his cleaver, screeching through the metal. She fell back, still firing the empty gun at them, screaming.

"NO! GOD NO!"

Her vision filled with light and she shielded her eyes. The sound of her death rang in her ear until a concussive blast slashed through it. Her ears rang for a moment as a high-pitched whine, dulling a rapid, throbbing guttering and moaning, dulling the squeals that hung above these new sounds. Without warning she was assaulted, a huge arm around her midsection. She thrashed and opened her eyes to beat back the brute. She stopped her assault as she tried to register the confusing form. The dark figure threw her onto a seat behind it that shook in time with the throbbing sound. The figure's pale face turned to the horde spilling over the gate. Some had fallen, but others trampled them. The figure held out and arm and another flash of light blinked, and shocked her ears. She instinctively grasped her seat and lifted her legs as the throbbing increased in frequency. She felt inertia toss her to the side and then forced her back into her seat as wind began to whip against her face. Her eyes locked into the tree line, her torch flashing over the twitching heads of the brutes as they soared past her.

The camp was a dump. An old boathouse turned into a slimy, fortified den. It contained one rotten, old boat on the other side, with planks taken from it to reinforce the doors and windows. A small oil lantern guttered in middle of the camp, throwing strange shadows all over the camp. Junk was scattered over the floor; tools, nails, chip packets, cigarette butts and milk cartons, as well as shards of broken glass, and empty bottles and cans. In the corresponding corner of the room to Hannah was 'Sasha', or so Hannah's rescuer had called her. He was currently fidgeting with her engine and fixing her rear seat. She was a bulky, and heavily customised ride, made for long journeys and durability; and so was he. Hannah sat on a seedy, damp mattress that was worm-eaten and smelt of equal parts brine, cigarette smoke and booze.

He had the typical biker look about him; black bandanna, black leather jacket, black boots, overweight, with scruffy, blonde stubble all about his face, grasping chip bits, oil and God-knows-what-else. He had flung her on the bed when they arrived at the boathouse, and at first she had feared the worst, but he simply left her there, sealed the door and started working on his bike with barely a word said between them. She had managed to coax precious little out of him since then, becoming more than a little annoyed.

Now he tramped over to her from the bike, retrieving the lantern and placing it at the side of the mattress, squatting to get to eye level with her.

"Right…what's your name?" His words slurred together in such a way that she had to pause for a second to try and decipher what he had said.

"Detective Hannah Chou, Ashfield County Police." She leered at him, and her words came out as a sneer. He stank of waste and oil, and Hannah had always disliked bikers, picturing them as animalistic, dirty and brutish.

He nodded and stood up, walking a little ways towards his bike again, the lantern throwing ghoulish version of him dancing about his form. He said nothing else. Hannah was taken off guard by his response, and this quickly turned to anger.

"Hey! And who the hell are you?!" She stood up and asserted herself. He stopped walking and turned a little and made a face as though she was speaking Greek..

"Hmph…name's Luke." He turned back and remained there, looking at his bike.

Hannah pushed on. "Well, _Luke,_ what the hell are you doing here? You certainly don't look like one of those…_things_." Luke walked over to one of the supports of the boathouse and leant against it as Hannah talked, his face neutral and unreadable.

"The question that should be asked is what a pig like you is doin' here. What's Ashfield want with this dump?" he crossed his arms and regarded her in the flickering light.

"Why should I answer that? That's police business. Wha-" Luke cut her off.

"It's my business now you fuckin' sow! This town's gone to hell and I rescued your ass to boot! I think I deserve and answer, eh?" She was taken aback a little at the gall of the man before she snapped.

"You don't deserve a damn thing! I'm the one that has the authority here, dammit!"

The biker's voice began to rise as he squared off against her. "If we're gonna survive whatever the fuck has happened here, we're gonna need to co-operate, and I need to know what the fuckin' police have to do with this mess?"

"The police don't have anything to do with this damn mess! You think those things out there are human?"

Luke paused and looked away. "I think a lotta things."

Hannah sighed in exasperation and turned away from him. She walked to the wall and peered through one of the tiny gaps in the wooden boards. A dark yard lay outside, fenced in and scattered with mechanical and wooden detritus. She couldn't see or hear anything of the brutes from Graycliff, only the lapping of Lake Toluca behind her. She was stuck here with this bastard until she could figure out what the hell was going on from him.

Luke spoke again, the anger gone from his voice, soft now, making it all the harder to understand him. "I don't know how long ago it was I came here. Time is hard to gauge like this. Maybe hours, maybe days, I don't really have a clue. I came in from the highway to pick up fuel and booze. I got to South Vale and found the place empty. Not a fuckin' soul. Servo's were full, and the food was still good, but not a fuckin' soul. Rode through the place and found nothin'. Tried to go back and the road had turned into a fuckin' cliff! Then I get mobbed by a bunch of ugly, butcher-knife bastards and I ride for Paleville. Crashed here when it got dark. And fuck did it get dark fast. I heard your gunfire from here and I bailed out to see what it was. Now we're 'ere." He crouched by the lantern and did not meet her eyes once during the whole recount.

Hannah turned away when he finished. "My business is still my own, but I can assure you that I know nothing of what has happened here. My…partner and I came here and our car came off the road…we made it to the estate and we…got separated. I was attacked and…" She paused as she remembered, her lip twitching in disgust. She also did not desire to tell the biker about the call she had received.

She turned to him and locked her eyes with his. "My partner is in the east garage in the tourist district of Paleville."

"Is he armed?" Luke didn't move still taring at the lantern. Hannah put her hand on the second pistol on her belt conscientiously.

"No…"

With that Luke stood and carried the lantern to the middle of the boathouse, hanging it, and snuffing the flame, turning on his flashlight to compensate before moving to his bike.

"Ok, lets go."

"Go? What do you mean, 'go'?"

He stared at her for a moment as he swung a leg over his bike. "To the east garage."

Was he serious? Bolting into the darkness without know what was going on? He read her hesitation and cut in.

"Your partner hasn't got a chance if he's unarmed. If Paleville's as bad as South Vale then you'd better hope your man ain't dead already." With that he started the bike and rammed the helmet that had sat on the handle-bars onto his head. He waved Hannah over as he slung a shotgun over his shoulder. Hannah almost instinctively moved and sat behind the biker. Part of her reassured herself that this was the most direct way of getting to Paleville, but another part of her still reeled at the man's proximity. She tried to remain as far away from him while still seated as she could manage.

Luke lifted the latches and bolts on the door and shoved it open, shuffling forward to do the same for the iron gate. With that, Hannah was forced to clutch the seat tightly as 'Sasha' screamed into the darkness of the road ahead.

Hannah felt a void to the left of her as the bike sped down the dark, abandoned road. A change in the air, different from the forest, heralded that they were passing the lakeside amusement park. It wasn't long now until they would reach the garages. The trip had thus far gone without incident. It had been, to Hannah, too smooth.

The bike pulled to a sudden stop and Hannah automatically reached for her gun. Luke already had his shotgun out and pointing it into the darkness of the road ahead, focused on the empty space just beyond the field of his bike's headlight. She kept her firearm similarly ready, although her gaze roved about the circle of light that sat in.

"There's something moving up ahead." That was all the explanation the biker gave. Hannah aimed at the spot the Luke was focusing on and waited. The apprehension was horrifying, and her mind began to form visions in the darkness, perverted forms of people, of monstrosities loping from the void. They waited for what seemed until the end of the world.

Then came the siren.

An agonisingly long, wailing howl rippled through the dark air. It rose slowly, Hannah's muscles tensing with it and raising herself a little in time with it, until it lingered at a single, ear shattering note. The sound pulsed as it held itself in her ears, as if the unnatural night itself was screaming. Parts of it lingered and echoed as it finally fell, Hannah feeling herself relaxing with its fall. It came up again and Hannah became more nervous as t repeated its call.

A feeling in her gut drew her attention to the subsonic moan that hung beneath the siren. A groan that grew and grew, holding on with a disturbing harmony to the lingering siren note. The bass moan washed over her from the void ahead like a dying breath, and she heard the tress rustle as it passed them. The night closed in around them, somehow thickening and pushing back the beam of light from the bike. The moan dropped off rapidly, quickly falling into lower keys until it disappeared. The siren continued as the darkness pulled in.

Both she and Luke were looking around, bewildered and alarmed by the sudden event. They no longer aimed ahead, but paned about, the shifting darkness moving like it was alive, and making the air smell and feel like hot breath. The siren fell off, leaving the ghosts of its wail in the foul air until there was absolute silence. Not even the lake lapped in the background. Only the bike's motor made any sound, and another, fainter one that crackled at Hannah's hip.

Luke turned to her as if to speak but never managed it. It had felt like the wind had knocked her down. It was like a tornado, made from hundred of tiny prickling knives flaying her skin, ravaging any exposed piece of flesh and flinging her off the bike. The wind held her, and it was all she could hear besides the dulled sound of her own scream. She flailed in the air and she was whisked away. In but a few moments she could no longer see the precious saviour light of the headlight and she was plunged into thousands of pinpricks of darkness.


End file.
